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Blind Eye in the Sky

Five thoughts about targeted killings following the new Hollywood targeted killings fiction ‘Eye in the Sky’:

1. ‘Eye in the Sky’ treats intelligence as certain facts. It reinforces the illusion that we have all the information, and that the information that we have is beyond doubt. In fact, intelligence is limited and uncertain in various ways. First, we only have what we are able to collect. As terrorists act in clandestine, data collection is challenging. Some data are beyond our reach, while other data are inaccurate, false or wrongly interpreted. Second, interpreting intelligence becomes even more challenging, as we are yet to agree on what defines a terrorist act or who should be characterized as terrorist. Third, reliance on sophisticated technology does not solve these inherent uncertainties, as data analysis by robust algorithms is as limited as the partial information on which it is based. Paradoxically, the reliance on sophisticated technology might even reduce uncertainty, as it might increase risk aversion and overconfidence in what we (think we) know and in the decisions that we make.

2. The scenario is as unrealistic as the torture ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario. Typically, targeted killing operations do not target suspected terrorists who wear explosives and are ready to bomb a shopping mall. In fact, when suspected terrorists do wear explosives and are embarking on a suicide bombing operation no one would argue that they should not be attacked. However, there are often alternatives to a hellfire attack on a home in a residential neighborhood. The movie’s choice to present this method as the only option, with no alternatives either in method or time, shadows the real debate concerning bombing a civilian home in a residential neighborhood due to the apparent presence of suspected terrorists nearby. Indeed, in many US targeted killing operations in Pakistan and Syria many civilians were killed or injured and numerous civilian residences were destroyed, leaving local families without a roof or shelter. Conveniently, the movie deserts the residential neighborhood immediately after the attack, and chooses to focus, instead, on the trauma caused to the US pilot and drone operators.

3. Women in the military or politics (or elsewhere) do not burst into tears every time something bad happens. The scene when the male General berates the female secretary of foreign affairs for criticizing him while ‘eating her biscuits and drinking her tea’ and then tells her she should ‘never tell a soldier he doesn’t understand the price of war,’ is chauvinistic and insulting. The fact that she responded to this insult with massive crying just made it worse. Similarly, the female drone operator cried so much she could barely follow her instructions, while her superior male pilot shed a tear or two, but kept it cool; sensitive yet in full control.

4. The one realistic point in the script was the way the Somali agent was treated: as disposable. Sent again and again on suicide missions, based on the racist assumption that all Somalis look alike. His life were the only ones left completely out of the algorithm’s robust calculations.

5. Finally, watching this movie a few months after British and US forces targeted an ISIS hacker in northern Syria and killed instead 3 innocent bystanders and wounded 5, and shortly after a US force continuously fired at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, killing 30 people, mostly medical staff and patients and completely destroying the only free trauma center in northern Afghanistan, portrayed the dilemmas in this Hollywood fiction as both unrealistic and self-righteous.

Similarly to so many other mainstream TV shows and movies, ‘Eye in the Sky’ continues the efforts to simplify and dogmatize a complex reality, and proves the maxim that ‘the first casualty of war is the truth.’ By using fake dichotomies between good and bad, us and them, now or never, the movie erodes some of the most important moral dilemmas of our time.

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One thought on “Blind Eye in the Sky”

Excellent post! I think you’ve nailed a number of the hugely problematic aspects of the film. ‘Fake dichotomies’ sums it up very neatly in two words. Now I think of it, that sums up the general perception of IL on the use of force, the film is not going to have done the field any favours!